I'm wearing red today in solidarity with my sisters of color. I'm wearing red today because I believe it is better to speak—and because the sound of every voice makes a difference.
The Sound of My Voice
I was a quiet child.
My shyness was for no good reason, really, other than that I was strange. I felt quite out of place in childhood; rambunctiousness didn't suit me. The ability of most children to inhabit their bodies without inhibitions—flailing arms and legs, tumbling somersaults, endless spinning to a dizziness that left them stumbling until they collapsed to the floor in a giggling heap—was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to other children, with my knitted brow studying them curiously, or my nose buried in a book. I was ever acutely conscious of my own physical presence, intimidating myself with my own awkward gestures, until I folded myself inward and tried to stay very still. I couldn't relate, and so I retreated.
Nothing brought me outside the safe space in my head more quickly than the sound of my own voice in a public space. I spoke so rarely that, when I did, my classmates would stare at me, which made me miserable. I never raised my hand in class, and when I was called on, hot tears would burn my eyes, and I would desperately will them away as I choked through giving my answer. Painfully shy only begins to describe it. I was 13 when I laughed out loud in a classroom full of my peers for the first time.
At 14, the shyness went away, disappearing one day so completely it was as if it had never existed at all. Suddenly, the eyes out of which I looked at the world seemed to belong to me; I no longer felt like an interloper in my own skin. I happily contributed to conversations in and outside class, and I discovered I was an unafraid (and hence skillful) public speaker. Accused of being weird for the books I read or the music I liked felt like a badge of honor, even if it wasn’t intended to be so. There only needed to be one other person in a high school of 3,000 who carried a copy of Camus' The Stranger under his arm and knew down to his bones what I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar really means to make the world perfect, and I found him (or he found me), and so it was.
And then I was raped. I'd barely ever kissed a boy, no less had sex with one; of course, rape isn't about sex, but about control. It's about controlling another person, both during the act and often, particularly in the cases of acquaintance rape, afterwards. Victims of acquaintance rape, especially young ones, as I was, are easily controlled (and silenced) using fear, threats of imminent danger to themselves or loved ones, and, for the most unfortunate among us, repeated abuse. After three years of such a cycle, my shyness had returned. I spent many of my days at university crumbling inside myself and hating the sound of my own voice. Only with my Camus-carrying friend could I find any peace—and even that was dependent on his compassion, and his infinite patience with me.
The shyness has never quite gone away again.
But I'm not called quiet anymore. Aloof, maybe; bitchy, definitely, in those moments when the shyness takes me, because even though I can sound terse, I won't be quiet, or still, and eventually people realize I was just being awkward. Better to be awkward, I've decided, than quiet; it's important to have a strong voice, and a loud laugh, and to use them both as often as you can, even when it feels futile...
I've started to appreciate the sound of my voice again. It's a (former) smoker's voice, low, infused sometimes with gravel and always with sibilant S's—a speech impediment that will never leave me. My voice has become familiar in a way it has not been before, and useful, too. When I think about the time I have spent stranded in my self-imposed quiet, I am scared of my own will taking me there again. I remind myself, then, firmly and as often as is needed, that whether it is I, or someone else, who demands my silence, it is simply not something that I can afford to offer. And all it takes to break the silence is the sound of my voice, which now, finally, makes me happy.
So, there was another debate among the Democratic candidates last night, and, uh, it was, uh, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Oh, sorry about that. I fell asleep just thinking about it.
Chris Cillizza has a nice, succinct wrap-up here, which I recommend, and the transcript is here. If that's just not enough debatey goodness for you, though, you can also try:
I don't know about you, but I get the feeling that the other candidates went after Clinton last night.
Not making headlines? The fact that the debate included not a single question about illegal wiretapping and retroactive immunity for telecoms—which is causing a major split among Democrats at the moment, led by one of the people on the stage last night. Yeesh.
UPDATE: In an email, my pal Bob Geiger says: "Was I just having a drug flashback to the 70s last night or, while not bothering to bring up FISA and illegal wiretapping, did the debate moderators actually ask presidential candidates about UFOs and what they're going to be for Halloween?" LOL! Totally.
At year end, Karen Hughes will resign from her post as undersecretary of state, acknowledging the inescapable fact that she can't turn a turd pile into gold.
Hughes said she plans to quit her job as undersecretary of state and return to Texas, although improving the world's view of the United States is a "long-term challenge" that will outlast her. "This will take a number of years," Hughes said in an interview to announce her departure.
I love Bush's original thinking that hiring Hughes and some good PR will just turn everyone around into loving us again. Too bad the results are a little different from what Mr. History-Will-Prove-Me-Right expected:
Polls show no improvement in the world's view of the U.S. since Hughes took over. A Pew Research Center survey earlier said the unpopular Iraq war is a persistent drag on the U.S. image and has helped push favorable opinion of the United States in Muslim Indonesia, for instance, from 75 percent in 2000 to 30 percent last year.
Obviously, those numbers will creep back up once Bush's ass is out the door, and I'm sure Karen Hughes knew this all along. Of course, that would've meant her trying to sell democracy over here instead of there.
Is there any word you compulsively mispronounce, because you got it into your head it was pronounced one way, and even though you've found out it's totally not pronounced that way, the mispronunciation refuses to unstick?
I can't think of any of these I have myself, although Mr. Shakes is famous for them. He has one of the most prodigious vocabularies of any person to whom I've ever spoken—it's genuinely impressive. It was also gleaned almost entire from reading, so he's often never heard these words actually spoken by anyone but himself, and it turns out he's not the greatest pronunciation-deducer of all time. My favorite ever was you-BICK-too-us, which is how ubiquitous tumbled out of his mouth.
I should note, in case it isn't obvious, that I find this habit to be one of the most charming, utterly endearing things evah about Mr. Shakes.
The Zogby International survey shows 52 percent of Americans would support a strike on Iran, while 53 percent expect President Bush to launch such an attack before the end of his second term. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is voters' No. 1 choice to deal with Iran, with 21 percent saying they would like to see her take on Tehran from the White House. Republican Rudy Giuliani was voters' second choice, with 15 percent.
Just 29 percent of Americans think the US should not attack Iran, with one in five people unsure about military action. Of those who would support a strike, 28 percent believe military action should wait until the next president is in office, while 23 percent want to see Bush let lose US missiles against Iran.
The thing is, mainly because I do not and cannot believe that anyone Bush nominates as Attorney General will reside in the same galaxy as what I'd consider an acceptable nominee, I just can't muster the energy to care.
You can find some people who do thanks to the lovely folks at Memeorandum, though.
"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about [President Bush's] mental health. There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact. … There's a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us."—Democratic presidential candidate and Representative Dennis Kucinich, concerned about Bush's psychological stability (and/or ours) after the president's recent World War III comments.
Recently, Boing Boing featured a new product designed to help women disguise themselves as vending machines, so, according to its designer, they can elude pursuers.
Just lift a flap on your skirt, ladies, and out comes the nifty disguise—and rapists will walk right on by!
This concept is nutty for several reasons, starting with "Would anyone be fooled by this?"—and not least of which being that women are about three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their homes, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street.
Nonetheless, clothing that turns, Transformer-like, into camoflage for its wearer is being seriously marketed to women to protect themselves against the threat of sexual assault.
Meanwhile, men can purchase this hysterical Halloween costume (possibly NSFW):
Frank the Flasher
Last time I checked, flashing was still a crime. To be specific, it's still a minor sexual assault. But in the same world where women are being exhorted to chameleon themselves into their surroundings to shake rapists off their human scent, men are being hawked Halloween costumes that recreate a sex crime without the pesky problem of possibly getting arrested for it.
Here, then, is precisely how the rape culture works. Women are tasked with increasingly myriad ways of preventing sexual assault even as men are encouraged to view it as fun, a bit of playful silliness, No Big Deal. And the more inextricably its transmission is associated with humor, the easier it is to shoot down dissenters as humorless, hysterical, over-reactionary.
And 'round and 'round we go.
Of course there will be people who look at the "Frank the Flasher" costume and laugh. But that's not exactly evidence against the insidious ubiquity of the rape culture, is it? That we have become inured to the gravity of unsolicited sexual aggression, that we can "find humor" in things that by all rights should be regarded as indicative of a profoundly debased predatory sexuality that runs counter to every principle of sexual egalitarianism and consent, is the primary affirmation of how deeply entrenched the rape culture is. If you're laughing, that's the problem.
This idea probably deserves a post of its own, but I also want to quickly point out that this costume is sold mostly on sites who make people double-dog swear they're over 18 before they access them, and, in one case, bearing a warning that it's not appropriate for Halloween parties attended by children. (As if someone daft enough to need that warning will be clever enough to heed it.)
Of course, exposing one's genitalia unbidden is not just a crime only when done to children; it's a criminal act to expose oneself to adults, too. I'm reminded of Eugene Volokh's ridiculous argument that the reason we criminalize touching a woman's breast or genitals against her will, as opposed to her shoulder, is because it might sexually arouse her. I noted in my response:
I suspect nearly everyone is familiar with the method of conveying to children what is appropriate and inappropriate touching by using the example of a bathing suit. No one should ever touch you on the places covered by your bathing suit. For boys, that's a signal that a stranger who tries to touch their genitals or buttocks is doing something wrong. For girls, it's the genitals, buttocks, and breasts. Is Volokh seriously arguing that the reason we impart this information to children is because we're worried about the children becoming sexually aroused? Or even just because we're worried about the pedophile becoming sexually aroused? I suspect not. I suspect he would recognize that there are other issues at play here aside from just sexual arousal—issues about bodily autonomy, trust, safety, emotional health, appropriateness. Which means, then, he's attempting to make the argument that sometime after puberty, women lose their right to not have the same body parts invaded on those principles.
Even though it's a crime to flash anyone of any age, by the time we're adults, we're expected to find this stuff funny; we're expected to resolve ourselves to the reality that we live in a rape culture and not be bothered by that which propagates it, like ubiquitous if minor sex crimes turned into cheeky costumes for giggles.
I mean, geez—can't you take a joke?
It's only when our risk of being raped starts to diminish that we start to regain our right to object to things like Frank the Flasher. Older women might be dismissed as fuddy-duddies, but there is generally some respect for an older woman's right to take issue with overt displays of sexuality and/or aggressive sex "jokes."
Children are (usually) regarded as deserving of protection, and older women are (usually) regarded as deserving of respect; it's young women who are most discouraged from objecting to the rape culture—and who receive the least amount of sympathy and about whom the most vicious narratives of victim-blaming become operative if they are sexually assaulted, ergo also making them most discouraged from reporting rape.
In other words, the most likely victims of sexual assault are also the people most expected to accommodate the rape culture and all its accoutrements.
Petulant grabbed video of Bush's presser this morning, in which he scolded Congress for "not getting its work done." This is just brilliant. Watch him bitch and moan about how Congress has had the UNMITIGATED TEMERITY to investigate shit and raise taxes to actually pay for things! And on top of that—they're spending money on things HE DOESN'T WANT THEM SPENDING MONEY ON! He wants them to spend money on WAR, and they keep trying to spend it on CHILDREN! He's truly unbelievable.
Full transcript grabbed from the White House website, below.
I just had a very constructive and important meeting with the leadership and the Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. And I want to thank you all for coming down, and thank you for your leadership.
Congress is not getting its work done. We're near the end of the year, and there really isn't much to show for it. The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq. And yet there's important work to be done on behalf of the American people.
They have not been able to send a single annual appropriations bill to my desk, and that's the worst record for a Congress in 20 years. One of the important responsibilities of the Congress is to pass appropriations bills. And yet the leadership that's on the Hill now cannot get that job done.
They've also passed an endless series of tax increases. You know, they proposed tax increases in the farm bill, the energy bill, the small business bill, and of course, the SCHIP bill. They haven't seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it. In other words, they believe in raising taxes, and we don't.
Spending is skyrocketing under their leadership -- at least proposed spending is skyrocketing under their leadership. After all, they're trying to spend an additional $205 billion over the next five years. Some have said, well, that doesn't matter much; it's not that much money. Well, $205 billion over the next five years in the real world amounts to this: $4.7 million per hour, every hour, for every day, for the next five years. That's a lot of money.
And that doesn't even include spending that would actually pay for 2 million people to move from private health insurance to an inefficient, lower-quality, government-run program. Despite knowing it does not have a chance of becoming law, the Senate will now take up the second SCHIP bill the House passed last week. I believe the Senate is wasting valuable time. This bill, remarkably, manages to spend more money over five years than the first bill did.
After going alone and going nowhere, Congress should instead work with the administration on a bill that puts poor children first; a bill that will take care of the poor children that the initial bill said we got to do; a bill that would stop diverting money to adults. You realize some major states in the United States spend more money on adults than they do on children? We want a bill that enrolls the more than 500,000 poor children currently eligible for the program who are not a part of the program.
We want to sit down in good faith and come up with a bill that is responsible, because Congress has been unable or unwilling to get its basic job done of passing spending bills. There are now reports that congressional leaders may be considering combining the Veterans and Department of Defense appropriations bills, and then add a bloated Labor, Health and Education spending bill to both of them.
It's hard to imagine a more cynical political strategy than trying to hold hostage funding for our troops in combat and our wounded warriors in order to extract $11 billion in additional social spending. I hope media reports about such a strategy are wrong, I really do. If they're not, if the reports of this strategy are true, I will veto such a three-bill pileup. Congress should pass each bill one at a time in a fiscally responsible manner that reflects agreement between the legislative branch and the executive branch.
I again ask Congress to send me a clean Veterans funding bill that we have already agreed to by Veterans Day, so we can keep America's promise to those who have defended our freedom and are recovering from injury. I again urge them to pass a clean Defense appropriations bill, and a war supplemental bill to fund our troops in combat.
I know some on the Democrat side didn't agree with my decision to send troops in, but it seems like we ought to be able to agree that we're going to support our troops who are in harm's way. I know the members feel that way, standing with me. I hope the leadership feels that way, and they ought to give me a bill that funds, among other things, bullets, and body armor, and protection against IEDs, and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. It would be irresponsible to not give our troops the resources they need to get their job done because Congress was unable to get its job done.
Again, I want to thank the members here. I appreciate us working together for the good of the United States of America. God bless.
Quixote just sent the link to the first installment of privileged wanker Matt Taibbi's new 2008 presidential campaign blog for Rolling Stone. It whiffs of the desperation of a boy trying to fill the big footprints left on this path by one Hunter S. Thompson, the pong of which would have been enough to drive me away, even without the unbearable crack upside my basic decency delivered by this rather stunning passage:
A youngish kid with long hair and a red t-shirt in this crowd started telling me his story, about how he’d been busted for possession of drug paraphernalia. "It was a couple of pipes…" he began.
I waved him off and explained that, as a member of the national campaign press, I was here to write about what I wanted him to say, not what he wanted himself to say. "Look," I said, holding up a bill. "I'm willing to pay twenty bucks to the first person who’ll say whatever I want him to say about Fred Thompson."
About ten sets of hands flew up, including the kid in front of me. I held up the twenty.
"Name," I barked.
"Gary Blakeman," he said.
"Age," I said.
"Seventeen."
I wrote that down. "Gary, does Fred Thompson look like a pedophile to you?"
He looked at me pleadingly. "Yes, right?"
"Right," I said.
"Yes, he does," he answered.
"So what you’re saying, Gary," I prompted, "is that you wouldn’t be at all surprised to walk into a room and see this candidate's penis in a four year-old child?"
"Of course not!" the kid said. "Because he looks like a fucking pedophile, dude!"
"Mmm-hmm," I said. "And what kind of face would you expect him to be making at that moment?"
The kid grit his teeth and strained his neck muscles. "He'd be like, unnnnhh!" he shouted.
"Thanks," I said, handing him the twenty. He took it and walked off with his hands over his head in triumph. I looked over at the wire-service girl, who was still humping an old couple about the Hillary thing. Amateur, I thought.
So, by now, everyone is probably well aware of my issues with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (and similar campaigns), which is to say nothing of the fact that Dove is owned by Unilever, which also owns the Axe brand—the commercials for which my virulent hatred is also undoubtedly familiar.
Turns out I have a problem with one Unilever brand making money criticizing images of women in popular advertising while another Unilever brand is one of the worst offenders ever of perpetrating negative stereotypes of women. (Go figure.)
Which makes this mash-up by filmmaker Rye Clifton—borrowing from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty's recent "Onslaught" ad and various Axe adverts—just all kinds of brilliant.
This bitch is fascinated by the politics within social justice movements. How to move forward, when to move forward, who to move forward with…that shit is just beyond interesting! And the issue of who gets left behind is particularly fascinating to me since...well, ummm...history has a habit, if you know what I mean (wink).
I've made a study of how movements address inclusion and why more often than not they don't do it well. Oh, there are a lot of reasons…racism, classism…the flawed theory of gradualism. Year after year the calls for solidarity rise up and year after year that solidarity is rewarded by bullshit…by "maybe next year", "the timing just isn’t right" and "your issues aren’t really our issues anyway". Too many organizations fail the moral test by backing almost there legislation versus inclusive legislation and choosing half assed advancement rather than pushing for true victory.
Blink.
One of my favorite examples of this is the American Women's Suffrage Movement. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was ratified without any reference to race. Suffragettes, fearing that a lack of Southern support would prevent passage, had kicked women of color to the curb despite our unique need for a protected vote. As it turned out, the amendment made it through without full Southern support...wince...and all that curb kicking may have been for naught.
Yet on the curb true suffrage remained…for some 45 additional years...until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed the issue of race that the 19th Amendment failed to. History is littered with examples that demonstrate that half assed equality isn’t equality...it is always not quite a victory.
I hope that the LGBT equality movement I'm proud to be a part of will learn from history and see that to claim true victory full inclusion is the only option...but I guess the pain ain’t so bad when you’re not the one getting cut and the wait doesn't seem that long when you're not still standing in line.
I was searching for a totally different news story when I happened upon this one, which just embodies so much happy pretty preciousness that I couldn't resist sharing it lest I explode with the selfishness of keeping it to myself.
It all started when pug-lover Donna Skoda and her husband were devastated by the death of one of their many pugs. When (this is the actual name, I swear) Bambita Pekita Meskita Chiquita Juanita the Salsa Dancer from San Antonio died, followed by another one of their pugs, Emma, Skoda said she "knew her animal-loving neighbors, Chris and Kirk Raymond, would empathize, but they went one better."
"Chris and Kirk made me a little card, a picture of Emma with a halo over her head," she said. It made her cry, and ultimately gave her a sense of relief, as if her precious pet was in a safe and lovely place.
Kirk Raymond created another card with Jesus holding Bambita in his arms.
"Kirk made it from a stock picture of Jesus in Photoshop," said Skoda, who was moved by his generosity of spirit. "It becomes art. It's very comforting."
So true. I always find it comforting when photographs become real art through the magic of Photoshop.
Naturally, since there's lots of money to be made in commandeering Jesus to comfort people these days, "Photoshop enthusiast" Kirk ("who works at Diebold by day") opened a website to sell his services—and Donna joined the upstart business to help with the printing and framing. The team works "from whatever photos the pet owner happens to have," like the photo of a cat "climbing over the living room couch" that Kirk Photoshopped into a picture of Jesus, who had originally been holding a lamb. Kirk is "skilled enough" to make "the pose seem natural," says Donna—and, while I don't know if I would describe the pictures as natural, per se, I would absolutely describe them as stunning.
But the beauty of these moving Pet Tributes isn't all, bitchez.
The [sic] say their faith cured their cat, Ajax, of lymphoma. Two years ago, Ajax had hard nodules on his spleen and the vets wanted to do exploratory surgery for cancer. The Raymonds decided to take a different approach.
"I have a real strong personal relationship with God," Chris Raymond said. "We held hands and prayed to God to save him."
Ajax is the picture of health today and received no other intervention.
All dogs really do go to heaven! Except the ones that are cats blessed by Jesus to live forever.
The email I received from The Portly Dyke about this recipe came with the subject line of: "ZOMG! Delicious!".
asian pear slaw
2 celery ribs 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice 2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar 1 teaspoon finely grated peeled fresh ginger 2 firm Asian pears, cut into 1/4-inch-thick matchsticks 2 scallions, thinly sliced diagonally 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh hot red chile, or to taste
Peel strings from celery with a Y-shaped vegetable peeler and cut celery into 1/4-inch-thick matchsticks.
Whisk together juice, vinegar, and ginger and stir in celery and remaining ingredients with salt and pepper to taste. Let stand at room temperature 15 minutes before serving.
(recipe here) PD noted: "[W]e had this salad tonight and it was OMFG! -- outrageously amazing. Complex flavors, absolutely satisfying, and one of those salads that I kept saying "I'll just have one more taste of this", as we hung around the table and talked once the feastery had abated."
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at shakergourmet (at) gmail.com Include a link to your blog if you have one!
So, Dick Cheney goes hunting, and, while he manages not to shoot anyone in the face this time, it turns out that the hunting lodge flies a confederate flag. Charming.
Cheney's people claim they knew nothing about it and he didn't see it blah blah blah. Everyone's waiting for him to repudiate the hanging of the flag, but come on—for a cyborg whose got diabolical plans to enslave the entire human race to megacorporation Halliburton, the confederacy is small potatoes. His beautiful robotic mind can't be wasted on such things.
A bunch of people have emailed me about this Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science study that ranked the Top 100 blogs based on the question: Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories that propagate over the blogosphere?
How awesome you find this news to be is, I guess, dependent on how important you think it is for people to be up on what the blogosphere is talking about—which is, let's face it, often a lot a shit, but sometimes the most serious issues we collectively face.
It also really says nothing about the qualities of the content at any given blog (good info? bad info? good writing? bad writing? lots of writing? just a link?), and it's not particularly safe to presume that highly-linked blogs are so because they are the most factual and best written. Sometimes that's true (Atrios), but not always (Malkin).
So what's ultimately being measured here seems to be compulsive blogitude, combined with breadth of interest. In other words: Who's the biggest magpie?
To which I have only to say: Caw! and Ooh—something shiny!
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